Don't be deceived by Tweak Bird's skinny discography. Although the duo are credited with only a handful of recordings (a few seven-inches and an EP), their nimble breed of psych/sludge metal has been simmering for decades. The line-up comprises Caleb and Ashton Bird — brothers who grew up on a sprawling farm outside the college town of Carbondale, Illinois. When not being home-schooled, the boys hung out in the woods for fun, but once they were older, musical instruments took over. According to Ashton, their first original creations were "eerily similar to the music we play now. Singing relatively pretty and jamming hard was just what naturally came out of us."

Cultivating their skills in basements and punk houses around Carbondale, the Birds cycled through a swarm of other players (Ashton figures he's seen about nine line-up changes), ultimately sticking to the two of them for the sake of control. But in the spirit of high-performance duos Lightning Bolt and Death from Above 1979, Tweak Bird don't need numbers to make sonic weight. The cavernous, bassy crunch of Caleb's guitar cruises without a hiccup, Ashton's drums serve as imposing punctuation, and, singing together, their voices straddle the line between an adolescent falsetto and a stray cat's yelp. Most of the pair's compositions are compact bursts banged out with the propulsion of DIY punk.

Boston is missing out on a chance to catch them live, since Tweak Bird were part of the now-cancelled August 20 Mondo Generator bill at the Middle East. But show postponements won't interfere with the duo's fascination with the æthereal. Their 2008 Reservations EP included both "Spaceships" and "Whorses." (Ashton once said that the latter was about an alien visiting Earth and meeting Native Americans.) Their upcoming full-length, Tweak Bird (Volcom Entertainment, August 31), carries on this theme with track titles like "Beyond" and "Distant Airways."

The initial lines in opener "The Future" sets up the new record: "Don't look now/The future's coming/In our minds, we are the chosen ones." For Tweak Bird, "the future" means a healthy dose of their typical sizzle plus ultra-spacy effects ("Round Trippin' "), a snake-charming saxophone ("A Sun/Ahh Ahh"), a flute ("Flyin' High"), and melodic nods to '60s psych-folk ("Sky Ride"). Ashton tries to break down the album's vibe: "I feel like we're moving." Then, taking from the refrain of "Tunneling Through," he adds, "We're tunneling through people's brains with our music."

Even with their urging you to break on through to the other side, Tweak Bird's intergalactic journeys never seem to take themselves too seriously. Consider Caleb's recent addition to his performing wardrobe: for reasons unknown to his own flesh-and-blood, he's begun to sport a Native American headdress. "What is the story with that? I don't know, man," says Ashton. "One day, he just showed up with it, and I was like, 'Ah, okay.' I don't know if that's weirder or us riding the motorcycle shirtless together" (on Tweak Bird's cover).

The camaraderie between the Birds is endearing. Pressed to offer an unusual detail about Caleb that only he would know, Ashton responds, "One quirk about my brother is that he's ultra-considerate," with the sincerity of a fourth-grader reading an essay about his favorite person. He could imagine working without Caleb for the long term, but it would seem odd. "I'd probably be looking over my shoulder wondering where he was. There's a certain amount of tour inside jokes I'd have to get rid of if he wasn't around."

Trans Am | What Day Is It Tonight? Trans Am Live, 1993 - 2008 Trans Am are distillers of guilty pleasures, mixing fat AOR riffs with sleazy electronic accents and a propulsive attitude typically reserved for arcade soundtracks. What Day Is It Tonight? covers the DC-area band’s 20-year history with high-quality, high-energy live cuts taken from their many tours.

Various Artists | Panama! 3 If you purchase a copy of Soundway’s wonderful Panama! 3 — and you should — you get two things for the price of one. First, this is a carefully curated CD of “Calypso Panameño, Guajira Jazz & Cumbia Típica on the Isthmus 1960-75” that will keep you smiling — and perhaps dancing — for a healthy while.

The Big Hurt: Lambert works it, 50 blows it, Moz ends it ADAM LAMBERT 's spicy AMA performance continues to dominate entertainment headlines, weeks after it first scandalized the nation — but why does America care what a man does with another man in the secluded privacy of the American Music Awards?

Local heroes, ’09 edition The Rhode Island music community flourished in 2009, with new full-lengths from the Coming Weak, California Smile, and the pride of Cranston West and official big-leaguers Monty Are I, who released Break Through the Silence in September.

Winter warmers Sure, some bands take the easy route and have album releases through the summer, enticing you to shows with back-patio barbecues and all-night rooftop after-parties. In January? Not so much.

Beyond Dilla and Dipset With a semi-sober face I'll claim that hip-hop in 2010 might deliver more than just posthumous Dilla discs, Dipset mixtapes, and a new ignoramus coke rapper whom critics pretend rhymes in triple-entendres.

Various Artists | Casual Victim Pile: Austin 2010 The notion that regional musical flavors exist independently in American cities is quickly becoming an archaic truism, seeing as how the world really is a stage these days, at least in the digital sense.

NO REST FOR BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD | March 13, 2013 Blackbird Blackbird's 2012 EP Boracay Planet takes its name from two sources: Boracay — a beach-filled, postcard-perfect island in the Philippines — and a dream Mikey Maramag had about the tourist trap, despite never having visited.

THE LUMINEERS AIM FOR THE RAFTERS | February 01, 2013 Jeremiah Fraites isn't famous — at least not yet. The drummer of the Lumineers, the folk trio who experienced an outrageously fruitful 2012, is talking to me two days before appearing on the January 19 Saturday Night Live, but he doesn't sound convinced that his band have crossed the fame threshold.

PHANTOM GLUE COME INTO FOCUS | January 23, 2013 Variations of "nightmarish" and "psychedelic" come up repeatedly as Matt Oates describes his band's work — which makes sense, given that Phantom Glue trace their roots back to Slayer, the Jesus Lizard, and cult post-hardcore act KARP.